GOP TIES IRS SCANDAL TO OBAMACARE — Republicans can scarcely mention the IRS political-targeting scandal without linking it to Obamacare. “If the tax-collecting agency can’t handle nonprofits without politicization, how can it be trusted to oversee an undertaking as massive as the health law?” the thinking goes. Pro’s Darren Samuelsohn and Paige Winfield Cunningham report on Republicans’ efforts to equate the issues on the same day the House passed, on a 229-195 mostly party-line vote, its latest plan to repeal Obamacare: “In terms of substance, the IRS scandal has nothing to do with its implementation of Obamacare. … But symbolically, it couldn’t have come at a worse moment for the Obama administration, which is already trying to fight the narrative that its agencies won’t be able to implement the law’s enormous changes without big mistakes. The GOP questions linking Obamacare with the IRS scandal stretched from members of the party’s leadership to its moderates and tea party firebrands.”

--Democrats mocked the GOP for their attempt to conflate the IRS controversy with Obamacare. “Any issue that comes up they will try to exploit,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters before the vote. “Some of them are legitimate issues, but they should not dominate everything.” The DCCC quickly went after Republicans in swing districts, accusing them of wasting taxpayer money on yet another repeal vote. http://politi.co/12ySMUw

Story Continued Below

--It didn’t take long, though, for Republicans to find more to fuel their effort. ABC reported Thursday that Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS official who oversaw the branch that is now accused of political targeting, has since left to head the IRS’s Affordable Care Act office. “Stunning, just stunning," Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement. Sen. John Cornyn responded with a bill that would prohibit the Treasury Department — including the IRS — from enforcing the health care law. Rep. Tom Price had already filed a similar bill in the House.

APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE EYES BIG LABOR-HHS CUTS — While the House was busy seeking a repeal of Obamacare, the Appropriations Committee was crafting spending targets that would slash labor, education and HHS programs by nearly 20 percent. POLITICO’s David Rogers reports: “[T]he numbers are a prescription for more stalemate unless the House and Senate leadership begin to get more serious about budget negotiations with one another and President Barack Obama. … Discretionary spending for Labor, Education and HHS would be capped at about $121.8 billion, or about $28 billion below the best available estimates for post-sequestration appropriations. Stepping back just a few years that would be $42 billion — or 26 percent below what was enacted in fiscal 2010, the last year that Democrats and Obama controlled the appropriations process.” http://politi.co/12yPxwt

EXPERTS: IRS CAN’T ACCESS MEDICAL RECORDS — For all the fears stoked by conservatives about the IRS’s role in Obamacare, tax experts say snooping through taxpayers’ medical records isn’t one of them. Per Pro’s Brett Norman: “What the agency won’t do, privacy advocates and tax experts say, is look at anybody’s medical records. … Nothing in the law ‘provides a pathway or gives the IRS authority’ to review health records, said Deven McGraw, director of the Health Privacy Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, and such a review is irrelevant to the jobs that the agency is tasked with doing.” http://politico.pro/17B9qaz

Happy Friday and welcome to PULSE, where we’re counting down the days until the next Obamacare repeal try. You know, if you stacked all the repeal legislation over the years from cover to cover, you might end up with a cute younger sibling for @TheRedTapeTower. The tower, by the way, saw a lot of action Thursday, carted from press conference to press conference as a pro-repeal prop. But wouldn’t repeal be a death sentence for the tower?

“Hello Brooklyn, how you doin’? Where you goin’? Can PULSE come too?”

GOP RENEWS CALLS FOR MORE DETAILS ON SEBELIUS SOLICITATIONS — Although the Obama administration has continued to reject any suggestion of wrongdoing, Republicans stepped up their calls for an explanation of Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s solicitation for Obamacare enrollment help from the private sector. A letter from Sens. Lamar Alexander and Orrin Hatch, as well as Reps. Fred Upton, Dave Camp and Jack Kingston, described an “apparent disregard for constitutional principles.” They contend Sebelius may have breached the Antideficiency Act by seeking outside help to fund an initiative the Congress opted not to fund. Separately, 33 rank-and-file House Republicans, including Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas), sent a letter also demanding details, including how much staff time was involved in the secretary’s solicitations. http://politi.co/10TtZML

--The administration has largely dismissed the complaints, noting that the secretary is legally empowered to seek assistance with issues of health care access and education. Sebelius aides have also acknowledged that she placed two fundraising calls since March, one to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the other to H&R Block, neither of which fall under her agency’s regulatory purview. Allies of the administration have also highlighted reports that Sen. Alexander made a similar pitch to private industry when he was secretary of education under President George H. W. Bush. Alexander aides have tried to distinguish his actions, rejecting the suggestion that he sought private sector funding for a program that Congress had refused to support. But Sebelius supporters note that Alexander’s effort is just one among several large-scale federal programs for which Cabinet officials in both parties sought private-sector support.

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JUDGE SUGGESTS OBAMACARE EMPLOYER MANDATE COULD BE IN JEOPARDY — A federal appeals court wasn’t too impressed with Liberty University’s challenge to Obamacare’s contraception coverage requirement, but an undercard in the school’s lawsuit might have a shot of advancing. Pro’s Jennifer Haberkorn reports that one of the judges on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals said the law’s employer mandate could exceed Commerce Clause authority, as narrowed in last year’s Supreme Court health care ruling: “Liberty is the only plaintiff in the country challenging the requirement that most employers provide qualified insurance to employees or face penalties.” http://politi.co/15Sn6yr

MICHIGAN LAWMAKERS LEAVE MEDICAID EXPANSION IN DOUBT — Medicaid expansion hopes are fading in Michigan, where both chambers of the Legislature have now opted to exclude it from their budget proposals. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder supports expansion, but he’s gotten little traction from lawmakers. A House alternative would expand Medicaid but limit recipients to 48 months of enrollment over their lifetimes, a plan that would require a waiver from the Obama administration. The AP report: http://bit.ly/104iBc1

NEW CDC REPORT DESCRIBES PREVALENCE OF MENTAL ISSUES IN YOUTHS — New data from the CDC finds that from 2005 to 2011, millions of American children had been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, ADHD, autism, Tourette syndrome and “a host of other mental health issues.” The report supplements other studies suggesting that one in five children had a mental disorder. The most prevalent disorder among children from 3 to 17 years old, according to the new data, was ADHD. And boys were more likely to have ADHD, behavioral issues, autism, anxiety, Tourette syndrome and cigarette dependence. Adolescent girls had a higher likelihood of depression or alcohol abuse. http://1.usa.gov/16CgFPs

-- CDC SPEARHEADING ‘TALK WITH YOUR DOCTOR’ ANTI-SMOKING CAMPAIGN — The Surgeon General, CDC and a handful of doctor groups are launching a campaign next week to persuade smokers to engage their doctors about efforts to quit. Supporters say doctors who talk to patients about quitting often double the success rate. The official launch of the CDC’s “Talk With Your Doctor” initiative will take place Wednesday at the National Press Club. Director Tom Frieden will join Surgeon General Regina Benjamin and officials from the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American College of Physicians

AI A POTENTIAL GAME-CHANGER IN HEALTH CARE? — IBM’s Watson, best known as the AI machine that crushed human competitors on Jeopardy, made an appearance on the Hill on Thursday for a demonstration on how the technology might become a critical health care tool. IBM officials, along with supporters from Memorial Sloan-Kettering and the American College of Physicians, briefed lawmakers — including Reps. Marsha Blackburn, Rush Holt, Tom Price, Michael Burgess and Paul Tonko — on the potential value of Watson’s technology for doctors’ decision-making. “Watson’s advanced analytics and its natural language processing capability will help doctors keep pace with a growing sea of scholarly and clinical information, enabling them to base their decisions in the most relevant and up-to-date evidence, which in turn will help reduce incidents of misdiagnosis,” according to organizers of the briefing. As doctors face more demands on their time and have little time to catch up on the latest advances in medical research, advocates say Watson could help fill in the gaps.

HAPPENING TODAY — The Society of Hospital Medicine hosts an annual conference in National Harbor, Md., at 8 a.m.; the GBC Health Conference on Business and Global Health wraps up on its third day in New York City; the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission meets at 10 a.m. to discuss outpatient prescription drugs and hear chapter updates; the American Academy of Actuaries holds an 11 a.m. briefing titled “The Shocking Truth Behind ACA Premium Changes: It’s Complicated!”

Drugmakers these days are using extensive databases of patient and pharmaceutical data to target marketing efforts, The New York Times reports: http://nyti.ms/13zpV3L

The IRS official who led the tax-exempt division when it targeted conservatives and is now in charge of ACA implementation received more than $100,000 in bonuses between 2009 and 2012, the Washington Examiner reports: http://bit.ly/16D9kz9

Arizona state senators have given an initial go-ahead to a Medicaid expansion plan, but it’s still unclear whether it will win support in the House. The Arizona Republic: http://bit.ly/16Da8E7

The New York Times looks closely at Bayonne Medical Center in New Jersey, “most expensive hospital in America”: http://nyti.ms/Z0cTg6

And the Times editorial board argues that a lot more information is still needed to make hospital prices transparent: http://nyti.ms/1081U2U

The Wall Street Journal travels to Scotland, where health officials are waging a relentless battle against Hepatitis C: http://on.wsj.com/YNErD6

The New Yorker’s Elements blog takes a look at the controversy surrounding the psychiatric dictionary of sorts, “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders”: http://nyr.kr/10ImhQF

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Authors:

About The Author

Kyle Cheney is a reporter for POLITICO’s Campaign Pro.

Cheney came to POLITICO in June 2012 to cover health care and spent two years covering the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and its political implications – from the Supreme Court decision upholding the law to the rollout of HealthCare.gov and the coverage gains that ensued. He came to POLITICO after five years reporting on Massachusetts government and politics for the State House News Service, an independent wire service. Coverage, which appeared daily in The Boston Globe, Boston Herald and others, included the implementation of a near-universal health care law; the indictment, trial and conviction of the state’s third felonious House speaker in a row; the rise and reelection of Gov. Deval Patrick; and all matters of public policy.

Cheney, a New York native and unabashed Yankees fan, graduated from Boston University in 2007 with a journalism degree after a semester as editor of BU’s student paper, The Daily Free Press.